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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

My New Theory: Racial Categoricalism

First there was racism, then stereotyping, then what Oliver Stone coined as "Placism" (from the Movie, "Any Given Sunday" quoted by Jamie Foxx's character in the movie), where each race should know their place.

Through the racism and the stereotyping that ensued, everybody started becoming categorized, and because of those dumb ass psychiatrists and the pseudo doctor psychologists, the box that everybody is categorized into is getting smaller, and even sociologists are starting to become guilty of this micro categorization of societies, groups, religions, etc. Therefore categorism is not just limited to ethnicity/race. Just look at drug addicts, criminals, people from a disadvantaged socio-economic class, sure there are some patterns (correlations), but these idiots by saying correlation does not equal causation, by putting everything into a nice, neat category is in essence are contradicting themselves by saying correlation equals causation by their categorization.

Therefore, I now coin the term "Categorism", where everything is concerned, especially how race is placed in a box. For an example of what I mean, please click HERE I don't consider this racist, I consider it racial categoricalism where Chinese people are supposed to be this way...

These are two examples I like to use, because I was talking to my white friend the other day and he admitted that if we (Asian & Black people) didn't fit in these categories, it would be hard for him to accept an Asian person or black person that doesn't not fit these neat categorical stereotypes...

Living in South Korea now, when you say caucasians, the first thought amongst the average Korean person (my own informal survey), the categories are for men:

1. All are handsome or good looking (I try to explain that models appear in magazines because they don't look like the ordinary person, yet they don't understand).

2. All caucasian men are tall (I'm 176 cm or 5' 9 1/2"), I'm not short OK!!!

3. They're all English teachers or US soldiers (20 years ago, just US soldiers).

4. They're all rich (think about it, if you're rich would you travel over 10,000 miles for a job? I try to explain that most English teachers are here because they can't find a job where they're from with their liberal arts, history, English Lit degrees and I always say, if you're living and eating well there's no reason to emigrate...

For the women:

1. They will all get fat or they are all fat!!! I'm confused with this one... (Then again, a hot chick in any country has no reason to emigrate, don't call me a chauvanist, guys know what I'm talking about).

Yet caucasians can be outside of these categories and be accepted, even as a Kyopo (a Korean person that lived overseas), I am categorized by Korean people.

The most common questions I heard:

1. Why did you want to come to Korea?My reponse: Lower crime rate, a homogeneous society (over 20 years of living in a heterogeneous society you want a change!), quality of life, plus living in Asia is very addicting, don't know why?

2. When will you go back to America?Been there, done that...I'm sick of 4 seasons, if I choose to emigrate again, why do I want to go back to where I grew up? I want to go to a warm weather country, wanna leave behind the cold!!!! This people definitely cannot understand, so my response is America is not the world, there's Europe (which I would rather live in, knowing what I know now), Africa, SE Asia, Central Asia, South America, etc etc etc why limit yourself?

The most common misconceptions of Kyopos (Koreans that lived or grew up overseas):

1. We're all super rich.2. We all went to great colleges/universities.3. We all study hard.4. The world is our oyster.

So, being a Kyopo, if you're not rich and did not go to a great college, people disperse away from you like ( fill in analogy here)...

Just my new theory, perhaps one day it may be published, LOL upon further research.